Mamma Mia!

When ABBA toured Australia in 1977 Lara Mulcahy was, tragically, too young to go see them. "Mum wouldn't let me and I was devastated," she says. "My sister and I had the T-shirts, the socks, a cushion, everything; we were pathetic. The first album I ever bought, when I was seven, was Arrival."

The universe has been making up for a child's disappointment ever since. Mulcahy, a graduate of WAPA, was cast as Rosie in the Australian Mamma Mia! in 2001, and toured the role for two years. She was then invited to join the London cast and performed in the West End for another 26 months. Now, having appeared locally in Snugglepot and Cuddlepie and Jerry Springer: The Opera, she's poised once again to sing some of ABBA's greatest hits eight times a week and get paid for it. Ask Mulcahy if she likes being in this show and you know the answer is: I do, I do, I do, I do, I do.

"I've been back from London for three years now so I need to brush up on the lines and the choreography," she says. "It's a bit like putting on an old coat but every time you do it you find new things in it." She joins show veterans Anne Wood (Donna), Peter Hardy (Bill) and Robert Grubb (Harry) in the remounted production, which opens at the Lyric Theatre this month.

If you somehow missed seeing the show, or last year's movie version, here's the set-up. Sophie, 20, is preparing for her wedding on the Greek island where her mother Donna runs a taverna. Uncertain of her parentage, but aware that Donna was intimate with three men in quick succession two decades earlier, Sophie tracks down all three possible fathers and secretly invites them to the wedding.

Donna's friends, Tanya and Rosie (Mulcahy), were once a vocal group called Donna and the Dynamos, which gives them plenty of opportunity to dip into Andersson/Ulvaeus catalogue. Mulcahy's big solo is ‘Take a Chance on Me', but she also performs in ‘Super Trouper' and ‘Money Money Money'.

Mulcahy says that people underestimate the difficulty of the Swedish popmeisters' songs. "Because ABBA's such a karaoke favourite everyone thinks they can get up and do ‘Dancing Queen' but a lot of it is really hard to sing. ‘Dancing Queen' goes over a two-octave range."

She adds that she has to live "like a bit of a nun" in order to keep "show-fit". "It's such a high-energy show and you give 110 per cent. It's like a wave that goes through the audience and by the end the whole audience is on their feet."
 
Too bad, then, that she never got to give the real ABBA a standing ovation. "But I've met them now," she laughs. "Except Agnetha. Björn came out for the auditions and I met Benny and Frida in London. They were lovely - they came on stage with us for the finale." Nick Dent